The BSCS: A Challenge to the Colleges

Abstract

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES has been interested in biological education since the very early days of the Institute and one of its first standing committees was the Education Committee. In 1959, this committee established the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) seek the improvement of biology The AIBS was fortunate in obtaining as BSCS Chairman, Dr. Bentley Glass of Johns Hopkins University, a former AIBS President. BSCS offices were established on the University of Colorado campus and its programs have been financed primarily through grants from the National Science Foundation, totaling over $2 million to date. Major policy is set by a Steering Committee which consists of 27 members-outstanding research biologists, high school teachers, educators and others interested in biological education. The BSCS operates with a small headquarters staff in Boulder, and to a major extent depends on working committees and consultants to carry out its tasks. Over 1200 biologists, including many readers of the AIBS Bulletin, have contributed to its work. The first major focus of the BSCS has been on high school biology and on the preparation of general biology courses for the typical tenth grade student. The situation in high school biology is quite different from that in high school chemistry and physics. In America, today, eight out of every ten high school sophomores take biology; these students run the gamut in intelligence, aptitude and interest. Only three in ten high school students take chemistry and two in ten take physics-and these are generally the college preparatory students at the higher ability levels. Thus, tenth grade biology has a broad range of students where high school chemistry and physics have relatively homogeneous groups of students. Furthermore, of the students taking tenth grade biology, about half never again take another science course-they take no more high school science and they do not go on to college. Tenth grade biology is their last formal contact with science in the school system. This gives high school biology the added responsibility of interpreting our scientific society to these students and of preparing them for living in a civilization that will be characterized by revolutionary scientific changes throughout their lives. In preparation for its work in designing new high school biology courses, the BSCS asked Dr. Paul Hurd of Stanford University to review biological education in American secondary schools during the last 70 years, giving particular attention to the recommendations of earlier commissions that had been established to study biological education in the secondary schools. Dr. Hurd's study has been issued as the first volume in the BSCS Bulletin series on biological education, and may be obtained from the AIBS.